RICHMOND, VA — March 13, 2015 —The Alliance, the channel partner industry organization that brings together agents, VARs, managed services providers, IT consultants and cloud specialists, has announced its 2015-2016 officers and new members for its executive committee.

Elected at the Alliance’s annual meeting in February 2015 in Ft. Lauderdale, the lineup includes a new chairman, David Gardner, president and CEO of Advantage Communications Group and Cellular Optimization. He replaces Richard Murray, president of master agency CarrierSales, who will remain onboard as a member of the executive committee.

New members of the leadership team include Robert Hayes, founder and CEO of eXemplify, and Ron Bohm, president of SelecTel.

“I am honored to serve as chairman of the Alliance for the next two years,” said Gardner. “This is a time of unprecedented opportunity, and the Alliance is uniquely positioned to assist its members in prospering from it. The new executive committee is anxious to contribute its talent, experience and hard work to build on the success of the leadership that has come before us.”

As it moves forward for the year, the Alliance said that priorities include purposefully growing its membership and service provider relationships, as well as providing additional business benefits for its existing members as next-gen hosted and cloud offerings become an increasing part of channel partner portfolios and business models rapidly evolve.

"Together, the members of the Alliance represent 300 vetted service providers, 8,000 telecom and technology advisors, and more than 250,000 happy customers,” said Bill Power, Alliance CEO, adding that soon, a new Website presence and brand identity will launch to reinforce the evolution of the organization. "Our goal for this year is to be a resource to help our members further their success and expertise within a channel industry that’s in a state of immense flux. I’m confident that our leadership team will provide the counsel, direction and lessons learned needed to support our members and providers, and achieve our goals for the next phase of our growth.”

2015 - 2016 Alliance Officers:
Chairman: David Gardner, Advantage
Vice Chairman: Karin Fields, MicroCorp
Secretary/Treasurer: Greg Praske, ARG
CEO: Bill Power

2015-2016 Executive Committee Members:
Robert Hayes, eXemplify
David Sebestyen, Cloud Taskforce
Richard Murray, CarrierSales (ex-officio)
Ron Bohm, SelecTel (ex-officio)

For more information, please contact:
Amy Humphreys
Vice President, The Alliance Partners
Email: Amy.Humphreys@thealliancepartners.com
Phone: 804-937-1505

ABOUT THE ALLIANCE
Since 1997, the Alliance (www.agentalliance.net), originally the Agent Alliance, has been a powerful voice for the channel. This diverse industry consortium of shareholders represents all industry sectors, from traditional communications to IT, cloud, storage and virtualization, mobility and converged IP services.

The Alliance is dedicated to fostering best business practices nationwide for the channel ecosystem. It is an important forum for education, collaboration and information-sharing, aimed at helping channel partners evolve their practices to remain competitive. The Alliance is able to leverage the unique and diverse expertise of its formidable member roster to put knowledge into practice in highly pragmatic ways to create an environment of continuous growth and improvement, which benefits partners, suppliers and clients alike.